Project MUSE®: Western American Literature - Latest Articleshttp://muse.jhu.edu/journal/418
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Africa Today.daily12016-12-09T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USUniversity of Nebraska PressVol. 44 (2009) through current issueLatest Articles: Western American LiteratureTWOProject MUSE®Western American Literature1948-71420043-3462Latest articles in Western American Literature. Feed provided by Project MUSE®

From the Editorhttp://muse.jhu.edu/article/629281
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This special issue came together initially through serendipity. I had been considering various topics for special issues, and queer theory and the West was a topic I thought might be timely. Then I noticed that several articles engaging with queer theory had been submitted to the journal at roughly the same time, and each had been recommended for publication by the peer reviewers. It dawned on me that, with a little extra work, it would be possible to combine them into a single special issue. Clearly the time had come, the zeitgeist was right, the stars had aligned, for a special issue of Western American Literature on queer theory and the West.To round out the issue, I solicited one additional article, and then
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Project MUSE®http://muse.jhu.edu/2016-12-09T00:00:00-05:00http://muse.jhu.edu/journal/418/image/coversmallFrom the Editor2016-08-27text/htmlen-USUniversity of Nebraska PressFrom the EditorHomosexuality and literatureGay authorsHarte, Bret,Historical drama, AmericanWest (U.S.)De Quille, Dan,Petroleum industry and tradeLabor campsFamiliesGreat Plains2016-08-272016TWOProject MUSE®29302016-12-09T00:00:00-05:002016-08-27Queer Wests: An Introductionhttp://muse.jhu.edu/article/629282
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[Errata]
Bret Harte’s 1860 sketch “The Man of No Account” ends as many of his stories do—in the death of its protagonist, David Fagg. In this story, this character’s fatal accident coincides with his dissent from marriage, a choice that engenders narrative incomprehension and reveals the complexities of a historically particular homoerotic and queer social imaginary that emerged during the California gold rush.1 A despondent young man of twenty-five, David Fagg lacks “manliness and spirit” and is initially unsuccessful as both a miner and a suitor (Harte 131). After two long years in California, he strikes it rich, and as he tentatively woos the daughter of a hotel proprietor, the narrator sees this act as a
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Project MUSE®http://muse.jhu.edu/2016-12-09T00:00:00-05:00http://muse.jhu.edu/journal/418/image/coversmallQueer Wests: An Introduction2016-08-27text/htmlen-USUniversity of Nebraska PressQueer Wests: An IntroductionHomosexuality and literatureGay authorsHarte, Bret,Historical drama, AmericanWest (U.S.)De Quille, Dan,Petroleum industry and tradeLabor campsFamiliesGreat Plains2016-08-272016TWOProject MUSE®594282016-12-09T00:00:00-05:002016-08-27Heterochronic West: Temporal Multiplicity in Bret Harte’s Regional Writinghttp://muse.jhu.edu/article/629283
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Bret Harte’s well-known short story “The Luck of Roaring Camp” (1868) begins by placing its narrative squarely in the historical moment of the California gold rush: “There was commotion in Roaring Camp. It could not have been a fight, for in 1850 that was not novel enough to have called together the entire settlement” (16, emphasis added). The text then proceeds to detail the numerous, and by the narrator’s reckoning, beneficial changes occasioned by the introduction into Roaring Camp of mixed-race baby Tommy Luck (whom Roaring Camp’s miners affectionately refer to as “The Luck”). At the end of the story, a destructive flood rips through the mining camp, obliquely recalling the Book of Genesis while also killing
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Project MUSE®http://muse.jhu.edu/2016-12-09T00:00:00-05:00http://muse.jhu.edu/journal/418/image/coversmallHeterochronic West: Temporal Multiplicity in Bret Harte’s Regional Writing2016-08-27text/htmlen-USUniversity of Nebraska PressHeterochronic West: Temporal Multiplicity in Bret Harte’s Regional WritingHomosexuality and literatureGay authorsHarte, Bret,Historical drama, AmericanWest (U.S.)De Quille, Dan,Petroleum industry and tradeLabor campsFamiliesGreat Plains2016-08-272016TWOProject MUSE®1061112016-12-09T00:00:00-05:002016-08-27“Left All Alone in This World’s Wilderness”: Queer Ecology, Desert Spaces, and Unmaking the Nation in Frank Norris’s McTeaguehttp://muse.jhu.edu/article/629284
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Nearly everywhere on earth, sand is principally made up of one element—in some places silica, in others limestone. Ninety percent of a grain is almost always just one of those two elements. But the other 10 percent is the percentage with a difference—the percentage that, in its difference, matters—the percentage that can tell us something about the history of a place.Can you describe that vast and holy desert, a desert that is so old that it once was the sea? No, you can’t. But does that stop you? Never.But you have not known what force resides in the mindless things until you have known a desert wind.“There was no change in the character of the desert,” observes the narrator near the end of Frank Norris’s
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Project MUSE®http://muse.jhu.edu/2016-12-09T00:00:00-05:00http://muse.jhu.edu/journal/418/image/coversmall“Left All Alone in This World’s Wilderness”: Queer Ecology, Desert Spaces, and Unmaking the Nation in Frank Norris’s McTeague2016-08-27text/htmlen-USUniversity of Nebraska Press“Left All Alone in This World’s Wilderness”: Queer Ecology, Desert Spaces, and Unmaking the Nation in Frank Norris’s McTeagueHomosexuality and literatureGay authorsHarte, Bret,Historical drama, AmericanWest (U.S.)De Quille, Dan,Petroleum industry and tradeLabor campsFamiliesGreat Plains2016-08-272016TWOProject MUSE®714392016-12-09T00:00:00-05:002016-08-27“Say It Right, Say It Correct”: Documenting the American West in The Laramie Projecthttp://muse.jhu.edu/article/629285
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Throughout Moisés Kaufman’s documentary play The Laramie Project, the citizens of Laramie express their concern about being “documented” and represented by others.1 Already the focus of intense media coverage in the immediate aftermath of the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard, many of the townspeople depicted in Kaufman’s play are conscious and wary of being portrayed and defined elsewhere. One character—the over-the-top limousine driver Doc O’Connor—admits that “when Hard Copy came and taped me, I taped them at the exact same time … so if they ever do anything funny they better watch their fuckin’ ass” (Kaufman, Laramie 48). Here, Doc reveals an anxiety about being depicted by the outside news media specifically, but
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Project MUSE®http://muse.jhu.edu/2016-12-09T00:00:00-05:00http://muse.jhu.edu/journal/418/image/coversmall“Say It Right, Say It Correct”: Documenting the American West in The Laramie Project2016-08-27text/htmlen-USUniversity of Nebraska Press“Say It Right, Say It Correct”: Documenting the American West in The Laramie ProjectHomosexuality and literatureGay authorsHarte, Bret,Historical drama, AmericanWest (U.S.)De Quille, Dan,Petroleum industry and tradeLabor campsFamiliesGreat Plains2016-08-272016TWOProject MUSE®1017762016-12-09T00:00:00-05:002016-08-27“Turrrtle”: Displacing and Recovering a Queerly Gendered Body in Helena María Viramontes’s Their Dogs Came with Themhttp://muse.jhu.edu/article/629286
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Helena María Viramontes’s Their Dogs Came with Them has readers trudge through East Los Angeles during the 1960s and 1970s, exposing how freeway construction and city development have threatened and destroyed the lives and personal histories of the city’s inhabitants. Within the novel, the history of Los Angeles’s transformation into the metropolis it is today represents the continuance of western advancement, causing the dislocation and erasure of its eastside community.1 This “freeway expansion,” as Sarah D. Wald explains, “echo[es] the displacement and loss of land Mexican inhabitants suffered after California transferred from Mexican to US ownership” (73).2 Following each character as she navigates through the
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Project MUSE®http://muse.jhu.edu/2016-12-09T00:00:00-05:00http://muse.jhu.edu/journal/418/image/coversmall“Turrrtle”: Displacing and Recovering a Queerly Gendered Body in Helena María Viramontes’s Their Dogs Came with Them2016-08-27text/htmlen-USUniversity of Nebraska Press“Turrrtle”: Displacing and Recovering a Queerly Gendered Body in Helena María Viramontes’s Their Dogs Came with ThemHomosexuality and literatureGay authorsHarte, Bret,Historical drama, AmericanWest (U.S.)De Quille, Dan,Petroleum industry and tradeLabor campsFamiliesGreat Plains2016-08-272016TWOProject MUSE®917792016-12-09T00:00:00-05:002016-08-27Before The Big Bonanza: Dan De Quille’s Early Comstock Accounts ed. by Donnelyn Curtis and Lawrence I. Berkove (review)http://muse.jhu.edu/article/629287
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In 1874 a group of mining magnates commissioned William Wright (1829–1898), widely known by his pen name Dan De Quille, to write a history of the fabulously rich silver and gold mines of Virginia City, Nevada. De Quille was considered the preeminent mining journalist of the district, and his Big Bonanza (1876) remains a classic. But due to the nature of the commission, The Big Bonanza is a diplomatic retrospective emphasizing the positive aspects of mining operations. Curtis and Berkove’s Before The Big Bonanza: Dan De Quille’s Early Comstock Accounts complements The Big Bonanza by reprinting fifty newspaper articles De Quille wrote between June 1860 and October 1863 as a correspondent to the Cedar Falls Gazette in
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Project MUSE®http://muse.jhu.edu/2016-12-09T00:00:00-05:00http://muse.jhu.edu/journal/418/image/coversmallBefore The Big Bonanza: Dan De Quille’s Early Comstock Accounts ed. by Donnelyn Curtis and Lawrence I. Berkove (review)2016-08-27text/htmlen-USUniversity of Nebraska PressBefore The Big Bonanza: Dan De Quille’s Early Comstock Accounts ed. by Donnelyn Curtis and Lawrence I. Berkove (review)Homosexuality and literatureGay authorsHarte, Bret,Historical drama, AmericanWest (U.S.)De Quille, Dan,Petroleum industry and tradeLabor campsFamiliesGreat Plains2016-08-272016TWOProject MUSE®68962016-12-09T00:00:00-05:002016-08-27Companion to James Welch’s The Heartsong of Charging Elk by Arnold R. Krupat (review)http://muse.jhu.edu/article/629288
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Arnold Krupat’s collection makes significant contributions to the field of Native studies, to readers’ understandings of the impact of Welch’s historically and culturally rich fiction on the canon of American literature, and to the illumination of the literary legacy of one of the most powerful and engaging writers of the twentieth century. The first scholarly compilation to focus intensively on Welch’s last novel, Krupat’s book features interviews with Welch, an unpublished excerpt from his first draft of the novel, a memoir by his widow, illustrations from his time in Marseille and from the Wild West shows of 1889 and 1905, and essays by renowned scholars. This is an invaluable resource for teachers and
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Project MUSE®http://muse.jhu.edu/2016-12-09T00:00:00-05:00http://muse.jhu.edu/journal/418/image/coversmallCompanion to James Welch’s The Heartsong of Charging Elk by Arnold R. Krupat (review)2016-08-27text/htmlen-USUniversity of Nebraska PressCompanion to James Welch’s The Heartsong of Charging Elk by Arnold R. Krupat (review)Homosexuality and literatureGay authorsHarte, Bret,Historical drama, AmericanWest (U.S.)De Quille, Dan,Petroleum industry and tradeLabor campsFamiliesGreat Plains2016-08-272016TWOProject MUSE®91132016-12-09T00:00:00-05:002016-08-27Oil Culture ed. by Ross Barrett and Daniel Worden (review)http://muse.jhu.edu/article/629289
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This large, sprawling, edited volume seeks to explore the question, What is oil culture? Lurking behind that question is something more than the desire to examine a commodity both ubiquitous and absent in our understanding of culture. A real sense of crisis animates many of the book’s essays, whether driven by the impact of peak oil or climate change, and provides a degree of political relevance to how the question is answered.The volume’s editors imply that a failure of imagination is partly responsible for society’s inability to move beyond oil, a failure best remedied by examining oil as cultural material, as part of our everyday experience and aesthetics. Doing so can add a new chapter to our understanding of
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Project MUSE®http://muse.jhu.edu/2016-12-09T00:00:00-05:00http://muse.jhu.edu/journal/418/image/coversmallOil Culture ed. by Ross Barrett and Daniel Worden (review)2016-08-27text/htmlen-USUniversity of Nebraska PressOil Culture ed. by Ross Barrett and Daniel Worden (review)Homosexuality and literatureGay authorsHarte, Bret,Historical drama, AmericanWest (U.S.)De Quille, Dan,Petroleum industry and tradeLabor campsFamiliesGreat Plains2016-08-272016TWOProject MUSE®63282016-12-09T00:00:00-05:002016-08-27Camp Olvido by Lawrence Coates, and: The Goodbye House by Lawrence Coates (review)http://muse.jhu.edu/article/629290
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Lawrence Coates is a decidedly California writer teaching in the Midwest at Bowling Green State University. His previous three novels, The Blossom Festival (1999), The Master of Monterey (2003), and The Garden of the World (2012), were all set in northern California and work on drilling down to the mythic roots that feed notable features of life (Silicon Valley, Mexican heritage, wine country) in the Golden State.In 2015 Coates continued to establish himself as a bona fide native son, releasing two books that “just gone and shown you how some [Californian] folks would do,” to embellish a quote from Flannery O’Connor’s neighbor. Coates’s novella, Camp Olvido, reminds us that the Latino laboring class propping up the
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Project MUSE®http://muse.jhu.edu/2016-12-09T00:00:00-05:00http://muse.jhu.edu/journal/418/image/coversmallCamp Olvido by Lawrence Coates, and: The Goodbye House by Lawrence Coates (review)2016-08-27text/htmlen-USUniversity of Nebraska PressCamp Olvido by Lawrence Coates, and: The Goodbye House by Lawrence Coates (review)Homosexuality and literatureGay authorsHarte, Bret,Historical drama, AmericanWest (U.S.)De Quille, Dan,Petroleum industry and tradeLabor campsFamiliesGreat Plains2016-08-272016TWOProject MUSE®96352016-12-09T00:00:00-05:002016-08-27Natives of a Dry Place: Stories of Dakota before the Oil Boom by Richard Edwards (review)http://muse.jhu.edu/article/629291
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Richard Edwards provides a memoir of growing up in Stanley, North Dakota, during the twentieth century to demonstrate the consequences of the oil boom on the Bakken Range. He claims the boom “swept away the town that I remembered” (4). He decries the “loss of local civic connections … in what some have called a ‘winner-take-all’ society” (14) and asserts that “oil is speeding up this process, demolishing the last vestiges of the culture I knew with a destructiveness more powerful than the grasshopper plagues of old” (14).Edwards seeks to shake the image of North Dakota as “flyover country.” His reconstruction of “Old” Stanley fits into the sometimes subtle, sometimes raw, revisionist movement in some contemporary
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Project MUSE®http://muse.jhu.edu/2016-12-09T00:00:00-05:00http://muse.jhu.edu/journal/418/image/coversmallNatives of a Dry Place: Stories of Dakota before the Oil Boom by Richard Edwards (review)2016-08-27text/htmlen-USUniversity of Nebraska PressNatives of a Dry Place: Stories of Dakota before the Oil Boom by Richard Edwards (review)Homosexuality and literatureGay authorsHarte, Bret,Historical drama, AmericanWest (U.S.)De Quille, Dan,Petroleum industry and tradeLabor campsFamiliesGreat Plains2016-08-272016TWOProject MUSE®66982016-12-09T00:00:00-05:002016-08-27The Beautiful Unseen: Variations on Fog and Forgetting. A Memoir by Kyle Boelte (review)http://muse.jhu.edu/article/629292
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When Kyle Boelte was thirteen, his older brother, Kris, hanged himself in the basement of the family home in Denver. At age thirty Boelte, having moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, perceives parallels between the coastal fog and his obscured memories of Kris. Fog makes it difficult to see clearly; it can be beautiful, softening hard edges; it can be dangerous, causing falls and shipwrecks. Memory, too, plays ambiguous roles, especially for one who has experienced tragedy. Worried about forgetting the past, Boelte is also troubled by it, wondering, “What did I know? What could I have done?” (33). An experienced researcher—with publications on environmental issues in Orion, Sierra, Earth Island Journal, and High
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Project MUSE®http://muse.jhu.edu/2016-12-09T00:00:00-05:00http://muse.jhu.edu/journal/418/image/coversmallThe Beautiful Unseen: Variations on Fog and Forgetting. A Memoir by Kyle Boelte (review)2016-08-27text/htmlen-USUniversity of Nebraska PressThe Beautiful Unseen: Variations on Fog and Forgetting. A Memoir by Kyle Boelte (review)Homosexuality and literatureGay authorsHarte, Bret,Historical drama, AmericanWest (U.S.)De Quille, Dan,Petroleum industry and tradeLabor campsFamiliesGreat Plains2016-08-272016TWOProject MUSE®67222016-12-09T00:00:00-05:002016-08-27Crossing the Plains with Bruno by Annick Smith (review)http://muse.jhu.edu/article/629293
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While many narratives have conveyed the freedom and fresh awareness that setting out on the road can bring, nearly all chronicle travel in company: they’re buddy stories, parent-and-child stories, companionable rebel stories. Longtime Montana writer and filmmaker Annick Smith’s Crossing the Plains with Bruno, in contrast, celebrates the pleasure and insight that one’s own company can bring during a solo expedition, the possibilities that time alone can offer for engaging deeply with landscape and history, and for meditating on memory, love, and mortality.As the title suggests, of course, Smith is not “alone,” strictly speaking, on the two-week journey that forms the subject of this book: she’s accompanied by her
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Project MUSE®http://muse.jhu.edu/2016-12-09T00:00:00-05:00http://muse.jhu.edu/journal/418/image/coversmallCrossing the Plains with Bruno by Annick Smith (review)2016-08-27text/htmlen-USUniversity of Nebraska PressCrossing the Plains with Bruno by Annick Smith (review)Homosexuality and literatureGay authorsHarte, Bret,Historical drama, AmericanWest (U.S.)De Quille, Dan,Petroleum industry and tradeLabor campsFamiliesGreat Plains2016-08-272016TWOProject MUSE®63852016-12-09T00:00:00-05:002016-08-27Western Literature Association 2016 Conferencehttp://muse.jhu.edu/article/629294
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The profane: not limited to the blasphemous or the obscene, but rather encompassing that which is underrepresented, undervalued, censored, denied, and/or secretly shared. Unofficial and unsanctioned pleasures and punishments. The necessary complement of the sacred, helping both to define and erode it.The fifty-first annual Western Literature Association conference, hosted by Linda Karell (Montana State University), will take place in the spectacular natural beauty and undeniable tourist development that is Big Sky, Montana. We invite you to think about “the profane West” in ways that challenge entrenched definitions/conceptions/celebrations of the West—including the once subversive.Join us for an opening night
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Project MUSE®http://muse.jhu.edu/2016-12-09T00:00:00-05:00http://muse.jhu.edu/journal/418/image/coversmallWestern Literature Association 2016 Conference2016-08-27text/htmlen-USUniversity of Nebraska PressWestern Literature Association 2016 ConferenceHomosexuality and literatureGay authorsHarte, Bret,Historical drama, AmericanWest (U.S.)De Quille, Dan,Petroleum industry and tradeLabor campsFamiliesGreat Plains2016-08-272016TWOProject MUSE®24832016-12-09T00:00:00-05:002016-08-27